Krister Shalm - 'A Loophole-free Bell Test' (UMBC Physics Colloquium 2017)

“From a loophole-free Bell test to quantum randomness”

Dr. Krister Shalm, National Institute of Standards and Technology

In the past two years, a loophole-free violation of Bell's 1964 inequalities, a 'holy grail' in the study of the foundations of quantum mechanics for half a century, has finally been achieved by four different groups. Here I will present the loophole-free Bell experiment carried out at the National Institute of Standards and Technology that requires the minimal set of assumptions possible. I will also discuss how we can use such a Bell test to build a random number generator that can be certified by quantum mechanics itself. Work is currently under way to incorporate this quantum random number generator into the NIST random beacon that serves as a public source of randomness.